Getting the Most Out Of Graphic Novels

It's not uncommon for us to encounter the phrase "I can't get my child to read real books" when speaking with parents. The underlying worry: that graphic novels have turned into a crutch which will ultimately hinder their students' progress. While graphic novels can be useful tools for students struggling to develop their reading skills and establish an interest in reading, very often, the parental instinct is spot on. Many students regularly or exclusively reading graphic novels are not actually deriving the maximum benefit from these types of materials. It's no surprise then that they are reluctant to subsequently engage with 'real books' that present an even greater challenge to their reading fluency and comprehension skills!

Below, we've shared a small sample of our favorite tips for making the most out of any graphic novels your child is reading. Of course, we always recommend ensuring that students who may be behind are also receiving systemic, structured support during their foundational elementary years outside of daily reading. If you think your child might need additional small group classes or private sessions to bolster their reading skills, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at info@enniseducation.com, as we'd be happy to make some recommendations!

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them"

— Mark Twain

Vocabulary Walls and Jars

One area in which graphic novels out perform regular books is vocabulary. Due to the visual supports on each page, graphic novels have the leeway to introduce more challenging vocabulary than a typical book without undermining a student's comprehension of the story. Therefore, most graphic novels do in fact include a higher frequency of advanced vocabulary words!

Every time a student encounters a new word, it provides an excellent opportunity to practice decoding strategies and expand their own receptive/expressive vocab. By introducing supports such as Vocab Walls or Vocab Jars, we can encourage students to go on a 'treasure hunt' to collect more words every time they open their book. We ask students to take a moment to decode new words, understand their meaning, and then practice writing them down before adding them to their word collection in order to grow their walls or jars. Usually, we encourage parents to provide some reward for filling up the wall or jar, as incentivizing them to pause and engage with new words rather than fly past them is critical to establishing good reading habits!

Character Trading Cards

The visual aids in graphic novels allow reader to quickly grasp the story. As students are less focused on decoding text or establishing an understanding of preliminary story elements, they are free to begin developing more advanced comprehension skills. Among these is character analysis.

Students can create their own 'trading cards' to explore the different attributes of each character in a story. The linked template is a great starting point, but we encourage readers to add their own twist by perhaps including each character's main goals, how they're connected to other characters, how they changed/grew by the end of the story, etc. The goal is to uncover as many 'cool' qualities as we can about a character to not only strengthen a student's inferencing and character analysis skills, but to help them invest in the characters found in every book they read. With this in mind, character trading cards could be a great activity to continue as students delve into traditional books in addition to graphic novels.

character-trading-card.pdf

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Companion Books

If graphic novels are intended to be a stepping stone or scaffold to support students as they progress to more challenging texts, then we should be sure to use them this way! There are numerous options for utilizing graphic novels in conjunction with other materials to transition students into new genres, reading levels, and 'real' books.

There are many non-fiction graphic novels for elementary ages that cover sciences, history, math, etc. The Secret Smithsonian Adventures is a wonderful fictional, graphic series that also dips into a variety of historical and scientific topics. We encourage students to read these alongside short, non-fiction articles that further expand on the subject matter and draw connections with the graphic novels. Similarly, The Magic Tree House series has published companionate, non-fiction graphic novels which can be read in conjunction with the original books to expand contextual knowledge. Rotating between these allows students to engage with both fictional vs. non-fictional and traditional vs. graphic novels simultaneously. Encountering all of these materials under the umbrella of a single adventurous story eases the transition into other types of reading for our students.